“Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants every year, with more than 70 percent coming to the country through the process known as “chain migration” whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an UNLIMITED relatives to the U.S. In the next 20 years, the current U.S. legal immigration system is on track to import 15 million new foreign-born voters. Between 7 and 8 million of those foreign-born will arrive in the U.S. through chain migration.” JOHN BINDER

“Sanders, who spoke for about a half hour,
advanced his boilerplate pitch, promising that Clinton would redress a myriad
of ills—income inequality, lack of access to healthcare, crumbling
infrastructure, poverty wages and overflowing prisons. He spoke as if the
disastrous social conditions in the US were unrelated to the policies pursued
by President Obama and the Democratic Party for the past eight years.”

Fighting back Wall Street’s
Looting and Rule

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continued his
campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Michigan
Thursday, making appearances in four cities. His stops included a United Auto
Workers (UAW) union hall in Dearborn, the University of Michigan campus in Ann
Arbor, Michigan State University in East Lansing and a high school in Grand
Rapids. He moves on to New Hampshire Friday.

The former Democratic candidate is seeking to
rebrand his “political revolution” into a get out the vote effort for Clinton,
the favored candidate of Wall Street and the military intelligence apparatus.
However, instead of the crowds of thousands he addressed during his primary
campaign, Sanders spoke before audiences of only several hundreds, largely made
up of Democratic Party faithful.

At his first stop at the UAW Local 600 union
hall, he addressed an audience of 200 to 300 people mobilized by the UAW. In
her introductory remarks, UAW Vice President for General Motors Cindy Estrada
noted the difficulties Clinton faced in attracting young voters. She called on
those in attendance not to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or other
“third party candidates.” She urged union members and others in the audience to
make an all out effort to get out the vote for Clinton and to register those
not already registered.

During the revolt of autoworkers against
UAW-backed contracts last fall, Estrada played the lead role in ramming through
the concessions agreement at Ford. The vote ended in a supposed “yes” vote at
Local 600 that gave the UAW just barely enough votes to claim that the contract
passed, amidst accusations from workers of ballot stuffing.

Sanders, who spoke for about a half hour,
advanced his boilerplate pitch, promising that Clinton would redress a myriad
of ills—income inequality, lack of access to healthcare, crumbling
infrastructure, poverty wages and overflowing prisons. He spoke as if the
disastrous social conditions in the US were unrelated to the policies pursued
by President Obama and the Democratic Party for the past eight years.

Sanders heaped praise on the unions, calling the
Local 600 union hall “hallowed ground.” He said nothing about the miserable
sellout foisted on US autoworkers last year by the UAW or its role in
suppressing the class struggle for the past three decades. Likewise he made no
mention of the ongoing struggles of nurses in Minneapolis, teachers in
Cleveland and Chicago, Canadian autoworkers or symphony musicians in Pittsburgh
and Philadelphia, who are among tens of thousands locked in bitter contract
battles.

A little later, at the University of Michigan,
Sanders spoke before an audience of several hundred, mainly students. In
contrast to the enthusiastic crowds of students he addressed last spring, this
campus visit was noticeably subdued. At UM he continued his effort to blackmail
young people into voting for Clinton by appealing to hatred of the fascistic
Trump.

Sanders has been assigned the role by the
American ruling class of channeling growing opposition to endless war and
social inequality back into the Democratic Party. To do this he attempted to
tap into the growing interest and support for socialism among workers and young
people in order only to demoralize and smother it.

A Socialist Equality Party campaign team
distributed information about the party’s election campaign of Jerry White for
president and Niles Niemuth for vice president to students attending the
Sanders event in Ann Arbor. Niemuth joined the campaign and used the
opportunity to talk to young people about the November 5 conference, Socialism vs. Capitalism and War, at Wayne
State University in Detroit.

Many students indicated to Niemuth and SEP
supporters that they only planned to vote for Clinton as the “lesser of two
evils.” There was widespread dislike for the Democratic nominee, as well as a
frustration over the outcome of the Democratic primary and a feeling there was
no choice but to vote for Clinton to stop Trump’s election.

SEP supporters asked one student, Zainab, what
she thought of Sanders’ decision to endorse Clinton. “He had to do it, but I
don’t agree,” she said. “We shouldn’t play off the fear for Trump to support
someone who is almost as bad.”

On Clinton’s record of support for war, Zainab
said the US has “caused chaos in the Middle East with billions of dollars lost.
It has cultivated animosity and created a vacuum in Iraq, displacing so many
families and turning them into refugees. It’s all for money and power, which go
hand in hand. We haven’t even gotten over colonialism. Honestly I don’t see a
difference between Democrats and Republicans. Clinton is not anti-war. And with
Trump, I can’t even understand him.”

When asked about attending the November 5
conference against war, she said: “It’s a great idea. I don’t even know how to
put it in a sentence, but yeah! I’m for it. An international movement would be
interesting because there are so many people in the Middle East who are
anti-war, who are opposed to the invasions and occupations of their countries.
I want to know how we can unite them.”

Another student, Korey, said he was a supporter
of the Green Party but was voting for Clinton. “I voted for Sanders in the
primary, and I support Clinton because she’ll appoint liberals to the Supreme
Court.”

Niemuth noted that Clinton and Trump both
represent the financial aristocracy, and that regardless of who is elected the
next administration will expand war and intensify the attack on the working
class. Korey replied, “I don’t like her positions on the wars. I’m against
intervention, and I don’t believe in the occupations, and Clinton’s record has
contributed to the crisis in the Middle East. I don’t agree with the US
involvement in Syria and I’m also against these drone strikes, but I’m worried
about a Trump presidency.”

Another student, Gary, who was originally from
England, said, “I’m a socialist. I think everyone should be given a decent shot
at life. I think the state should help people. Sanders was the only American
political campaign I’ve ever contributed to. I think he had to endorse
Clinton.”

A SEP supporter asked him whether there was a
contradiction between Sanders’ self-proclaimed “democratic socialism” and his
support for the pro-war, pro-Wall Street Clinton campaign. He said, “I don’t
like it, but she’s better than Trump. I wouldn’t say I’m entirely anti-war, but
I’m anti-unjust wars.” When asked whether any of the US wars of the last 15
years were just, he said: “No. They are not justified.”

Courtney said, “The wars are to get oil. Clinton
is a billionaire and she’s in it for the business.”

Her friend Aji said, “Everyone in politics is
stupid, and we tend to do things for financial gain.” When Niemuth explained
that the wars are not the product of general “greed,” but of the capitalist
system, Courtney said: “Oh, I hate capitalism, basically for the reasons I
already said. I think socialism would be better.”